VIETNAM-FALL OF SAIGON-VIETNAM WAR-COMMUNIST TROOPS

Photo taken around April 30, 1975 showing South Vietnamese soldier on a military truck in the streets of Saigon, following a last ditch battle, after General Van Tien Dung of the North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) launched the final assault on the city on April 29, 1975. South Vietnamese President Duong Van Minh orders the surrender of South Vietnamese troops, led by General Nguyen Van Toan and the dissolution of South Vietnam, putting an end to the Vietnam War, which lasted more than thirty years, the conflict having begun with the reconquest of French Indochina, in September 1945, with the return of the French army and the sending of French forces under the command of the French army of General Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque in 1946. This final episode begins the reunification process which will end definitively on July 2, 1976. More than 7,000 people will be evacuated, including 1,373 Americans and 5,595 South Vietnamese. Then appear the first boat people loaded with thousands of South Vietnamese, candidates for exile. (Photo by Phan THANH GIAN / AFP) (Photo by PHAN THANH GIAN/AFP via Getty Images)